Events

Year 2023/2024

March 19: The Algernon-Gordon Effect: Rethinking Human-Animal Relationships

March 19, 2024

Weird Fictions Research Group proudly invites you to the next “Weird Medicine” event! During this workshop, we will reflect upon the potentialities of Daniel Keyes’ Hugo Award-winning short story “Flowers for Algernon” (1959) to challenge—or not—our relationship with laboratory animals.

Year 2023/2024

April 11: Pregnant with an Abject Fetus: Disruptiveness of the Patriarchal Order in “Rosemary’s Baby” and Halsey’s “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”

April 6, 2024

Weird Fictions Research Group proudly invites you to the next “Weird Medicine” event! The talk will focus on the theme of the dangerous fetus in two movies on monstrous gestation – Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Halsey’s independent movie If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power (2021).

Year 2023/2024

March 12: “I Want it Out!”: Gynaehorror & Pro-Life Narratives in Post-Roe v. Wade

March 4, 2024

Join us for another lecture in the Weird Medicine series, this time focusing on a subgenre of horror called gynaehorror. As a thematic subgenre, it refers to films that center on lived female experience and the horrors embodied therein – such as the state’s use of biopower in its dominion over reproductive autonomy.

Year 2023/2024

February 28: The (Im)perfect Body: Body Horror in the Magnus Archives

February 28, 2024

Duing this talk we will listen to few episodes of The Magnus Archives and then discuss how Body Horror operates through sound and narrative.

Year 2023/2024

November 9: Scared Sick: Medicine and the Gothic Tradition

November 9, 2023

Join Weird Research Group for the second meeting of Weird Medicine Series! This talk will be grounded in the foundational Romantic period and will explain ways in which Gothic works reflected some of the most controversial medical pursuits, playing out their possibilities and dangers.

Year 2023/2024

December 19: Body in Ruins: Brandon Cronenberg’s Cinema of Exhaustion

December 19, 2023

Join Weird Research Group for the another meeting of Weird Medicine Series! This talk will focus on “the principle of somatic wholeness,” that is the idea that the body is to be “understood as a sovereign self: closed, contained, unified, and under rational control”

Year 2023/2024

January 25: New Technologies And Their Impact – From The Psychiatrist’s POV

January 25, 2024

Join Weird Research Group for the fifth meeting of Weird Medicine Series! The talk with psychiatrist Joachim Budny will serve as an occasion to exchange perspectives and information about the impact of new technologies on our everyday lives and well-being while staying close to this year’s theme of WEIRD MEDICINE.

Year 2023/2024

January 23: A New Life: Memory, Identity, and Ethics of Mind Manipulation in To The Moon 

January 23, 2024

Join Weird Research Group for the fourth meeting of Weird Medicine Series! During the meeting, we will take a closer look at the game To The Moon, which will provide a starting point for a discussion about memory, ethics, and the future of psychology.

Year 2023/2024

October 30: Weird Halloween: Normal Again? The Portrayal of Mental Health(Care) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

October 30, 2023

Join Weird Fictions Research Group for the first Weird Medicine meeting this semester about classic 90s TV show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

American Studies Colloquium Series

May 25: English Language Bias and the Generalizability Problem in the Face of Global Linguistic Diversity

May 25, 2023

According to different sources, there are between 6,000 to 8,000 languages spoken in the world today. However, many academic fields tend to rely on English as a model language and do not question the generalizability of findings from studies done with English speakers. This talkwill illustrate how English is in some respects unusual and how focusing on it exclusively might provide a biased picture of language and the human mind.

American Studies Colloquium Series

May 18: Understanding Appalachian Otherness

May 18, 2023

The Appalachian region of the US is a place surrounded in myth and stereotypes. This presentation explains the various scholarly and popular understandings of Appalachia, contrasting the definition of the region based upon geographic, economic, and cultural criteria, and discussing the differences between Northern and Southern Appalachia.

Year 2022/2023

May 9: Call of the Deep: Mermaids in Film and Fiction

May 9, 2023

We’ll talk mermaids old and new. The ones with lovely fins and the ones with sharp teeth. We’ll journey through the unruly waters of Greek mythology, medieval (AND communist!) Warsaw and the Mariana Trench. We’ll talk mermaid taxonomy and history. We’ll talk about Mami Wata and the Little Mermaid. And we’ll talk how natureculture continuum and gender binary are traversed and challenged through the immensely popular figures of mer-people.

News

MOST Student Exchange Program

April 26, 2023

Applications for the MOST Student Exchange Program are now open! Apply until May 15.

Free trial to Project MUSE Journals

April 26, 2023

Enjoy the free trial access to Project MUSE Journals: Premium Collection until June 8, 2023.

News

Visit our stand during the UW Open Day

April 18, 2023

Learn about our BA and MA programs in American Studies during the University Open Day this Saturday